#chewscript 027 Obi-wan lives through his fight with Vader. Check it out. @starwars pic.twitter.com/Mrt7SaT3Qc
— Peter Mayhew (@TheWookieeRoars) April 13, 2016
Peter Mayhew is an absolute treasure. Let me just say that right up front. He’s also not afraid of peeling back the curtain on some of our most favorite movies; namely, the original Star Wars trilogy. Every day, he’s been posting pictures of his original Star Wars script, which contains a bunch of incredible behind-the-scenes trivia and some “deleted scenes” (read: script pages that were apparently never shot). Today’s reveal was a pretty significant one: according to his original script, Obi-Wan Kenobi was supposed to live through his duel with Darth Vader.
In the script, Obi-Wan goes charging into a group of stormtroopers, running away from Vader at the end of their duel. He gets wounded after he deflects a blaster bolt from one of the troopers, and is carried back to the Falcon by Luke. Vader lets him go, and the movie continues on as normal from there. Mayhew only posted a few pages from the original script, so there’s no telling how Obi-Wan’s presence would have affected the rest of the movie, but I’m not so sure it would have been such a good thing.
If I could nerd out for a second: Obi-Wan’s sacrifice is a major point in the development of Luke’s story. Him witnessing the death of his mentor propels him further down the hero’s path. Sure, if Obi-Wan didn’t die here, it could very well have been somebody else, but the stakes for this scene and the ensuing escape would have been so much lower, and definitely would have bled out a lot of the tension that made this scene what it was. As well, Obi-Wan dying adds emotional impact when you consider that he was one of the last remaining known Jedi. At that point in the movie, the existence of other Jedi were considered to be rumors and legends, so the movie’s feint towards this idea that one of the last few Jedi had died was a pretty significant one.
All said, though, I would have definitely liked to see some more Alec Guinness in Star Wars, even though rumor has it he wasn’t too happy with what he was doing there anyway. Ah, well. At least we’ll always have Ewan McGregor, right?
(via io9, featured image via Lucasfilm)
—The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.—
Follow The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google+.
